Tha'ts half my problem with Wes Anderson right there. Everything is superfluously built to have some kind of meaning, but there are no clues as to what that meaning might be. So you end up with pseudointellectuals and hipsters arguing over what the smallest bullshit in the movie symbolizes, when it probably had no intended meaning to begin with other than to trick people into thinking it has some deep significance. So Anderson now can seems like some cinematic virtuoso because a million different people have projected their overstuffed interpretation onto what, as a result, has no meaning at all. How many of you know what a MacGuffin is? Well, Anderson's MacGuffins are his entire films.

The best example would be bad poetry made of nonsensical words that the writer insists are full of depth and meaning, but are actually just a whole bunch of words that the writer probably doesn't know the definition of.

That was a body double, confirmed by Portman's rep.

i disagree subtlety doesn't necessarily mean ambiguous or vague.... i think his dialogue is sparse and beautiful, simple and to the point...yes it's subtle compared to other movies around, and yes there is a slight distance one can feel from the "characters" but isn't that the point...this is not cinema verite...they are very specific complicated characters in a film and they have strange and unusual relationships, but their feelings come right through... i thought tenembaums was extremely emotional and, in the end, a simple family drama
with people falling in and out of love, emotions confused, and people trying to gain acceptance...how more real do you want it?

it just seems that you are bitter for some reason....who cares how hipters and pseudointellectuals interpret the movie...ultimately film is a highly personal experience and if you didn't enjoy it because you prefer other types of movies then say so...

and yes..some things have no meaning other than being there in the scene....and the beauty of it is what you get out of it...

Meanwhile, on planet Earth, the impetus behind making short films, and their place in the world, is much more expansive than the narrow definition you've constructed of what they're "meant to be."

I've made short films. And I sure as hell never made them with anything in mind other than furthering my filmmaking ability. And I certainly never made them with financial gain at the fore of my thoughts. I'd like for you to share your firsthand short-filmmaking experience.

Even the full-body shots from the side? Because the only thing that separates her scene in Chevalier with the one (that I'm thinking of) in Goya's Ghost is that she turns her body just enough to show the other ass cheek. And if she really did get a full-body double and a digital head replacement, my respect for her as a film actress is cut exactly in half.

i guess major hollywood short films are financed by dreams and ground up angel babies......and, for gods sake, they try to sell you designer handbags subliminally!...the characters are secondary and forget the production design which has very little to do with art.....

can't mess with my boy wes!

I'd like you to tell me exactly what Natalie Portman was thinking when she said, as deadpan as she could, "If we fuck, I'll feel like shit tomorrow."

And I guarantee you it will be different from what I thought she was thinking when I heard her say the line.

And I guarantee it will be different from what another person thought.

And so on.

You'd think that ambiguity would be good, but, having seen Wes Anderson's films, the impression that I've gotten is that he's essentially denied the actors any leeway at all to make their imprints on their characters. They are devoid of personality. Their words don't make up for the fact that every character delivers their lines in the exact same way. What they say should be brilliant, but instead it's devoid of any human touch, and the emotion is sucked straight out. It sounds like HAL 9000 is saying their lines, and unless he's trying to make the point that people are robots (which, quite frankly, he's not), then he's taking great material and making it mediocre.

I'm sure he'd be an exceptional novelist, where people project their own mental images onto good situations and reasonably exceptional dialogue. Instead, he gives us good dialogue that's been positively annihilated by his mediocre filmmaking ability.

Yes, I see characters in Chevalier. I see people with some kind of history together. And if anyone else had handled the material, I might have been interested in them. They might have had personalities. But instead they're emotional vacuums, perfect for overanalytical hipsters to project pseudo-meaning into empty actions. And, quite frankly, they're boring.

mmm, i don't know...i think it means that she'll regret having found him in a hotel room in paris where he's obviously hiding from her. She'll regret having sex with him because she's hurt him and he's run away. She'll regret having found him because she knows the relationship is doomed....would you disagree...i don't think it's ambiguous...

in my previous post i called it subtle and straight and to the point....minimalism that allows emotion to come through..i believe even with more weight....

i'm sorry, again i see a lot of emotion there....in a very theatrical post-modern (oh no! not every hipsters favorite hyphenated adjective) setting...

well, i'm sorry you didn't enjoy the short. I'm looking forward to darjeeling and see more of jason schwartzman's "quirky" character and perhaps learn a bit more about him. lay of the hipsters, just don't pay them no mind and they will leave you alone and one day you'll find out that you just might have been a hipster with a heart of gold yourself.......you you you...overanalytical jock...

I'm sorry, but you haven't created a catch phrase there, and it's not very clever, no matter what you may think. Mainly because it doesn't make much sense.

A) Cut the shit with the ellipses. That's by far my biggest pet peeve of all time. Trying to make yourself mysterious in a discussion about a film's significance? Give me a break.

B) There is no emotion. None. They are deadpan. They have no vocal inflection, a constant vocal tone, and no facial expression. It's probably the point, to void the characters of emotion and make them distant. And that obviously doesn't succeed, considering here you are, trying to make them seem emotional when they're intentionally vapid in order to assign importance to Anderson that isn't there.

Apparently, you've never been to the theater, because theater actors intentionally exaggerate emotion so that people can see it. That's why when someone overacts we call it "theatrics." There's nothing theatrical about the film.

Also, postmodern is a very leigitimate term. But please provide evidence of it.

He wasn't quirky. He was boring. The entire point of a quirky character is to inject some excitement into an otherwise undeveloped personality. And I don't have any problem with his personality being undeveloped, since this is only a lead-in to a larger film. All the same, he was boring as hell. I don't give a shit about him.

i really don't like when discussions turn into personal assaults so i'll stop. (if you were offended by the jock zinger..it has a little face winking after it meaning that i was joking)

I'm sorry if use ellipses it allows me to pause and think as i type.

and, i guess i'll forget about ever going to the theater because i don't understand it or have never seen a play. i guess i might have misused the term "theatrical." I meant that the viewer should be aware that it is a stage or set and the actors are limited by the stage and their roles.

good bye..........and stop being so aggro...I'm sure you have great taste in postmodern films where the viewer is aware of the character being simply that: here's a quote by some dude:

"Postmodernist fiction is defined by its temporal disorder, its disregard of linear narrative, its mingling of fictional forms and its experiments with language." - Barry Lewis, Kazuo Ishiguro

"experiments with language" hmmmm, strange....

or this other dude:

"[postmodernism is] Weird for the sake of weird." Moe Szyslak, The Simpsons

oh, and i read a previous post of yours where you had said that you hated when people used the term quirky to describe a character..so i used it thinking you might recognize it as me being snotty...

and here's my catch phrase (warning: it might not be clever or memorable):

"Sublty Claaaaptastic!"

goodnight!

You can't simply take your fingers off the keyboard? Freud would have a field day.

Here, it's important to make the distinction between language and speech. How you say something and what you're saying are different. There's nothing abnormal or experientational about the language in the short. There's no temporal disorder. There's no mingling of fictional forms. There's nothing postmodern about the film. You didn't know what "postmodern" meant, you had to look it up, you just threw it out as a buzz word to try to sound knowledgeable about something of which you're not, and that's irritating as hell.

Jesus Christ, that's embarrassing to read.

...

I dislike this question because it reeks of the elitism that says "You can't possibly make a critical or intelligent statement about X artistic medium unless you are an artist in X artistic medium." But since you asked: Yes, I made many short films through four years of film school in various capacities. After that, I Executive Produced last year's Paris je t'aime, which featured short films by directors like the Coen Bros., Cuaron, Alexander Payne, Van Sant, etc. At the moment, I'm co-producing a documentary short 'Carissa' that is currently in post-production.

In any case, I don't believe that's any more relevant than your short filmmaking experience because I don't presume the entirety of filmmakers should share my own specific reasons for producing a short. Just as an example, beyond the reasons you listed, we are making 'Carissa' not just as an artistic endeavor (although it certainly is that) but also with hopes of enacting social change - opening dialogue about the failures of the American juvenile justice system and encouraging changes to public policy.

There are many more reasons why people make short movies, of course - to create a 'calling card film' for themselves, to create the kernel of an imagined longer project, etc. But to me, stating 'short films aren't really meant to be commercially successful.' is reminiscent of the hollow criticism that such and such band has "totally sold out" by virtue of the fact that they're actuallly making their music available to more than eight people.

You obviously disagree, but I find this a perfectly acceptable and refreshing approach. I think it's absolutely desirable an effect that while his characters feel specific to me, the treatment of their situations require that a viewer brings something of himself into his reading.

And you know what? He's not by any stretch of the imagination the first filmmaker to utilize this technique. Ozu did it, as did Carl Th. Dreyer. So does Kiarastami. What a bunch of hacks!

The impression you mention that he denies his actors any leeway to express emtion? That's exactly the technique the French master Robert Bresson used with his actors. From Roger Ebert's Great Movies essay on Pickpocket: "Bresson, one of the most thoughtful and philosophical of directors, was fearful of ``performances'' by his actors. He famously forced the star of ``A Man Escaped'' (1956) to repeat the same scene some 50 times, until it was stripped of all emotion and inflection. All Bresson wanted was physical movement. No emotion, no style, no striving for effect. What we see in the pickpocket's face is what we bring to it." Anderson is not Bresson in stylistic terms, not by a longshot, but in the sense of what he sometimes requires of a viewer he's not so different. Don't be so opposed to taking something from yourself and investing it into your reading of a film.